Members of the Otis Institute collect nurdles which are small pre-production plastic pellets on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 at the Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro, Calif.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

Members of the Otis Institute collect nurdles which are small...

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Nurdles which are small pre-production plastic pellets are plentiful on the shoreline on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 at the Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro, Calif.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

Nurdles which are small pre-production plastic pellets are...

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Rachel Yedlin and other members of the Otis Institute enter the bay to collect nurdles which are small pre-production plastic pellets on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 at the Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro, Calif.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

Rachel Yedlin and other members of the Otis Institute enter the bay...

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Nurdles which are small pre-production plastic pellets are the target of an new clean up program by The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, State Water Resources Control Board and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 at the Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro, Calif.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

Nurdles which are small pre-production plastic pellets are the...

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Susan Caust hauls out a bag of debris and garbage including nurdles which are small pre-production plastic pellets on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 at the Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro, Calif. The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, State Water Resources Control Board and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have launched a first-in-the-nation enforcement effort to eliminate the discharge of nurdles into the waters of California.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

Susan Caust hauls out a bag of debris and garbage including nurdles...

Nurdles are the tiny bits of plastic that are melted down and used in the production of plastic bags, bubble wrap, packaging and wrapping material. They may sound cuddly and nonthreatening, but they are believed to be responsible for the sickness and death of thousands of fish and birds in the region that have mistaken them for food.

"It's a very big problem," Blumenfeld said during Friday's first mandated nurdle cleanup operation at Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro. "We're looking at the practices of companies that have a great deal of these nurdles and we're making sure they are contained."

Three plastic bag manufacturing companies and one automobile bumper manufacturer have been ordered to develop procedures to prevent future spillage of pellets. The companies also have to conduct cleanup operations during high tides at nearby Oyster Bay, where the local storm drains empty out. The wetland around Oyster Bay, where workers were using pool skimmers Friday to capture the nurdles, is prime habitat for the endangered California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.

As mitigation for the pellets that were already spilled and can't be recovered, the companies have to clean up litter on the shoreline between Sept. 1 and Feb. 1 for the next two years.

Ironically, one of the bag manufacturers produced a plastic sack with the phrase "Don't Trash California Bags."

Regulators have known about the problem ever since a giant floating patch of plastic - including nurdles and other debris - twice the size of Texas was found in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the North Pacific Gyre.

A billion bags

Americans use about 1 billion disposable plastic shopping bags each year and much of the trash finds its way into storm drains, creeks and rivers that flow into the ocean.

Nurdles and other small bits of plastic may look like food to many marine mammals, fish and birds. Biologists with the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County have documented health problems associated with the ingestion of plastic. A necropsy of a sperm whale a few years ago found 450 pounds of debris, including plastic cones, in the stomach, center biologists said.

The problem is that plastic can take from 500 to 1,000 years to break down completely. Potentially worse, Blumenfeld said, is the fact that toxins accumulate in the plastic. Studies have found toxic accumulation in floating plastic between 1,000 and 1 million times the ambient concentrations in the surrounding water. The plastic "is like a big sponge that attracts toxins," Blumenfeld said. "It bioaccumulates toxins."

EPA scientists are conducting studies to determine whether those toxins harm animals that consume the plastic.

Plastic manufacturers use small pellets because they melt uniformly and are easier to move. They are often loaded into factories from railroad cars in major industrial areas and spilled by the thousands, officials said. Wind then blows them around and rain washes them into storm drains. Eventually, the tiny pellets find their way into waterways or the ocean.

"I'm sure this happens in Ohio, Nebraska, all over the country," said Greg Gearheart, the senior water resource control engineer for the State Water Resources Control Board. "Any place where bags are used I'm sure there will be a bag manufacturer nearby spilling pellets."

Despite what is obviously a widespread problem, virtually nothing was done, even after the 2007 passage of AB258, which requires regional and state water boards to control nurdle loss.

"It just hasn't been on people's radar to be worried about this," said Christine Boschen, the water board's senior engineer.

Surprise inspection

Boschen said a surprise inspection was held at San Leandro's Metro Poly Inc. in 2009, mainly because it was near the board's regional office. They found "gross spillage," she said. Inspectors then went to the San Leandro offices of Foamex Innovations Operating Co., E* Poly Star Inc. and Unipoly Inc. and found piles of the plastic pellets wherever company workers had loaded or moved them.

State and federal officials promised that the San Leandro operation would be duplicated statewide and eventually throughout the country.

"We are going to do this again, city by city, industrial neighborhood by industrial neighborhood," Boschen said. "The pellets don't go away and they are one part of a giant problem."